514 FLORIDA GALLINULE. 
some vegetables, picking them up as they swim. They seldom 
leave the pond or river where they get their food and exer- 
cise, and are peculiarly attached to such as are bordered with 
sedge and bushes; and standing waters, green with vegeta- 
tion, furnish them with abundant provision of animalcula and 
pond-weeds. ‘They lay twice or thrice in a season, building 
their nest upon low trees, stumps, and logs, with sticks and 
fibrous substances, rushes and weeds, or other coarse materials 
in great abundance, invariably placing it by the waterside. 
The eggs are very long, of a greenish white, spotted with 
rufous, and very pointed at the small end. There are nine 
or ten in the first brood, the subsequent ones less and less 
numerous, and the mother never leaves the nest without care- 
fully covering them with weeds. The chicks are no sooner 
hatched than they swim with instinctive dexterity, pursuing 
their parent, and imitating all her motions. 'Thus are two or 
three broods reared in a season, which, while under her care, 
she regularly after their evening’s sport leads back to the 
nest, where she uses every exertion to make them warm, dry, 
and comfortable; but when grown up, and taught to provide 
for themselves, she turns them off. 
The Florida gallinule, or water-hen, is fourteen inches long ; 
the bill one and a quarter to the corner of the mouth, and 
one and an eighth to the posterior portion of the elypeus ; it 
is red, as well as the clypeus, with the point greenish. This 
clypeus, or bare red membrane spreading over the forehead, 
is more than half an inch wide between the eyes, occupying a 
ereat portion of the head, and being posteriorly cut somewhat 
square or slightly cordate, the reverse of what is observed in 
the European, which is rather pointed at this place. The 
whole plumage from the very base is of a dark plumbeous hue, 
or sooty black, the head and neck being a shade darker, and the 
lower portion lighter, and more tinged with bluish, so that 
they might be styled cinereous. The mantle, that is, the whole 
back with the wing-coverts, is highly tinged with olivaceous ; 
the quills are blackish, and the tail deep black, much more 
